News and insights for post-acute care professionals

During this afternoon’s CMS Understanding Your SNF VBP Program Performance Score Report call, it was announced provider’s SNF VBP annual performance reports were placed in CASPER today. Be sure to retrieve your 1st year of program performance report and review it carefully. Correction requests to the Performance Score Report will be accepted for 30 days following the report’s release so the clock is ticking. Your data will be reported publicly in late fall of this year via Nursing Home Compare. This call was recorded, including Q&A, and will available in approximately 2 weeks.

Report clear as mud? Today’s presentation – 27 slides – can help you to understand what you’re looking at. Here are some other resources:

All SNFs paid under Medicare’s SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS) are included in the SNF VBP Program. As required by statute, CMS withholds 2% of SNFs’ fee-for-service (FFS) Part A Medicare payments to fund the SNF VBP program. This 2% is referred to as the “withhold”. CMS redistributes 60% of the withhold to SNFs as incentive payments. CMS is required to redistribute between 50% and 70% of this withhold to SNFs as incentive payments. CMS redistributes 60% of the withhold to SNFs as incentive payments. This policy was finalized in the FY 2018 SNF PPS Final Rule.

SNF VBP is NOT the same as SNF QRP. This distinction was raised during the Q&A session today. I encourage you to utilize the many resources above, including the slide presentation to learn more about SNF VBP.